Sucker Punch

[Lucas]

i bet it has more booty shots!

[GeneChing]

I think Mick liked this more than I did, which is really rare as he's very critical. Our review will be up in a few hours. Stay tuned!

'Sucker Punch' review: Be a doll and escape
Mick LaSalle, Chronicle Movie Critic
San Francisco Chronicle March 24, 2011 04:00 AM

03/25/11


In this film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures, Emily Browning portrays Babydoll, left, and Carla Gugino portrays Madam Gorski in a scene from "Sucker Punch."

Rated: G | PG | PG-13 | R
Sucker Punch

ALERT VIEWER Action fantasy. Starring Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung and Abbie Cornish. Directed by Zack Snyder. (PG-13. 109 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

Though Zack Snyder is known as an action director ("300," "Watchmen"), he is a genuine artist and one of the most exciting and promising filmmakers to emerge in the past 10 years. His new movie, "Sucker Punch" - let's just say it - is a failure, but there's so much talent on that screen that the movie can't be dismissed as a waste of time. Or at least not a complete waste of time.

With other action directors, even some good ones, you get the sense of people working mechanically - that they have an idea for something they want to see and then assemble it, using actors, props and computers.

But Snyder seems to work internally and intuitively, so that no matter how overpowering the action, there is always room for unconscious inspiration, for details that make only psychological or emotional sense: A young woman has her blouse ripped by her stepfather, and Snyder pauses to show the shirt button, in slow motion, twirling to a stop on the floor.

That moment occurs in the brilliant first sequence of "Sucker Punch," a miniature silent movie in which our heroine, Baby Doll (Emily Browning), endures the death of her mother, brutalization by her stepfather and commitment to a nightmarish mental institution. All this is communicated with style and specificity and with shots that reverberate through the mind: a blue eye staring out in horror through a keyhole.

Snyder gives us a film that takes place in three worlds, or rather levels of consciousness.

In the first world, which we take to be the real world, Baby Doll has been institutionalized and must escape before she is given a lobotomy. In the second world, which might also be real, she has been sold into white slavery and lives in a brothel with other women, where she has to dance for customers. Finally, the third world is made up of Baby Doll's fantasies, the dreams of destruction, triumph and freedom that she has every time she dances.

In this way, Snyder is attempting to do something similar to what Guillermo del Toro did in "Pan's Labyrinth." In fact, he's trying to go del Toro one better: Instead of giving us two parallel worlds, he is giving us three, each commenting on the other.

Indeed, the very first time Baby Doll goes into her dance and lands in some ancient temple, fighting three armored monsters, it seems that Snyder's inventiveness and imagination are without limit. Yet, ironically, it's precisely at that point that the limits of "Sucker Punch" are defined.

This film marks the first time that Snyder has made a film from his own original story, and everything that's wrong with "Sucker Punch" - and, in the end, fatal - derives from that story.

All too soon, the movie degenerates into a formula, one in which, at certain intervals, Baby Doll dances and we, in the audience, are force-fed another action sequence - each one longer and less interesting than the last.

The story of Baby Doll's attempts at escape, the real story, is abandoned for interminable stretches.

Moreover, in a film whose approach must be justified in psychological terms, there are nagging imprecisions. Whose fantasies are these? What are the parallels, either factual or emotional, between the actions in one world and the next?

In a sense, these are the little things Snyder needed to work out meticulously, if only for the sake of letting his imagination run free within these wide constraints. Instead, we get the opposite, an imagination cramped by too unsure a grasp of what will fit and what won't.

In the end, Snyder confuses going ugly for getting serious, and he destroys his movie completely.

To talk about the acting in a film like this is pointless. The young women are decorative, images to be manipulated or sometimes just photographed lovingly, paired in front of mirrors as they talk, looking at each other, their reflections looking elsewhere. They're fine, but this is Snyder's show all the way.

I just hope he doesn't misinterpret what I expect will be the reception of "Sucker Punch" as punishment for being artistic. It's just a bad screenplay. Not everyone has to be a writer. To be a first-class director is rare enough.

-- Advisory: This film contains sexual situations, scenes of violence and emotional torment.

[GeneChing]

Hit with a SUCKER PUNCH by Gene Ching and Patrick Lugo.

[sanjuro_ronin]

By the sounds of it, I will wait for the unrated directors cut

[Lucas]

would you suggest this or battle for l.a. if one had to choose?

[@PLUGO]

I think I would choose this over Battle LA for the under the skirt shots and new wave nostalgia.

AV club gave Battle: LA a D+ while ginging Sucker Punch a grade of C

Sucker Punch bears the unmistakable mark of hyper-auteur Zack Snyder, but it could just as easily have been willed into existence by the collective geekocracy. It’s as if the filmmakers took a poll at Comic-Con of all the elements attendees seek in a movie—starlets in skimpy outfits adept at hand-to-hand combat; Nazi robot monsters; elaborate fantasy worlds; a wise mentor figure who adopts many forms; cabaret-style covers of New Wave hits; and why not throw in Don Draper while you’re at it?—then combined them all in the ultimate fanboy mash-up. Snyder has described it as “Alice In Wonderland with machine guns,” but it’s more like The *****cat Dolls Present Steampunk Kill Bill, only more assaultive and pandering than that description suggests.
Emily Browning leads a cast of young actresses as a hard-luck orphan in some alternate universe 1950s where life would have to improve immeasurably just to qualify as ****ensian. A gauntlet of formative traumas lands Browning in a gothic mental hospital and then in a nightmarish cabaret/brothel. She regularly escapes the drudgery by entering into an elaborate fantasy world where she and her fellow kept/abused women do battle with Nazi mechanical men, dragons, and various other beasties with the sagacious counsel of shape-shifting mentor Scott Glenn.
CGI has made it so easy to create fantastical worlds out of computers and imagination that a film can offer a never-ending parade of eye-popping images and larger-than-life setpieces and still feel dull. Sucker Punch offers the same combination of overpowering style and nonexistent substance as Snyder’s earlier 300, along with a depressingly black-and-white worldview that splits humanity into vessels of pure good and exemplars of unspeakable evil. Only this time, Snyder is pandering to the Barely Legal demographic rather than trafficking in over-the-top ****eroticism. Browning has wildly expressive eyes and body language, but she turns wooden when delivering Snyder and Steve Shibuya’s alternately purple and stilted banter. Like the film, she seems to regard plot and dialogue as necessary evils. With its quests to retrieve magical totems, clearly demarcated levels, and non-stop action, Snyder’s clattering concoction sometimes feels less like a movie than an extended, elaborate trailer for its redundant videogame adaptation.

[GeneChing]

I haven't seen Battle for L.A. so I couldn't say...

Given a choice right now, I'd see The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman.

[Lucas]

thanks Design Sifu, i think that seals the deal, Sucker Punch it is!

@Gene...I wish that was in a theatre near me

[doug maverick]

what can say about this thing who some would call a movie.....it was horrible, no kind of story, not enough action or rather there was enough action but the scenes inbetween were just so melo dramatically boring, you almost didnt care when the action came up. the music while good, was misplaced and way to contemporary for a film that suppose to be in the late 30s early 40s.had they kept the entire movie in the "animepunk" fantasy world from beginning to end this would have been a bad ass movie. a group of badass girls on a suicide mission i could so get into that. but the whole thing about her step father and especially the whole club stuff, was just lame and unnecessary. Zack Snyder once again proves he is the poor mans michael bay....i had 0 expectations for this movie and it failed to live up to even that.

[Lucas]

All that aside I think the action scenes were sick myself. Just for the first scene with the giant demon samurai I think it was worth it . If I were to watch this in the future I would prob only watch the action scenes its really the best part. I thot the dragon part was badass too. I also thot the main chick was hot and was good for passing the rest of the time as eye candy

The katana was sick

[doug maverick]

All that aside I think the action scenes were sick myself. Just for the first scene with the giant demon samurai I think it was worth it . If I were to watch this in the future I would prob only watch the action scenes its really the best part. I thot the dragon part was badass too. I also thot the main chick was hot and was good for passing the rest of the time as eye candy

The katana was sick

just imagine if zack snyder had the balls to make the entire movie in that "animepunk"(this is my official word for this type of film) world. you would have had a whole new genre of film. he didnt have the forsight, and neither did warners, this could have been the tentpole they so desperately want.....oh and one more thing(said in scott glen voice) carla gugino who i love to death and thing she is one of the hottest chicks walking the planet shouldve known that americans doing eastern euro accents, sounds like americans doing eastern euro accents.

[Zenshiite]

^So how do you feel about Snyder doing Superman doug?

I thought he did a great job with Watchmen. His love for slo-mo is a little exasperating though.

[doug maverick]

idk, superman needs a shot in the arm, and watchmen was ok. zack just needs to know how to make a coherent story, im glad jonathan nolan is writing the script for this. hopefully zack spends time on the inbetween scenes. and not just running to the action.

[Lucas]

I do agree the film would have been better if it were all that live action anime style. The parts that were, were super hot. all there was to do when it wasn't was look at the women. Even so they were way more fun to look at when slaying dragons and robot gunmen lol

[Lucas]

Oh also I think most of the stuff that wasn't action was for female viewers